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Dragon Boat Canada


IDBF


Canoe Kayak Canada

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[DBWTim]

As some of you may or may not know, a team from Vancouver was sent to Shanghai to participate in the event. I was lucky enough to be able to go along with them and had been asked by the CIDBFS to set up and maintain a blog and "tweet" of their participation which can be accessed here. What I failed to realized (or completely forgot) was that the Chinese government have blocked access to certain sites. Of those sites, WordPress and Twitter were among them. Lucky for us, DBW is still accessible so I will try to update everyone through this thread. It seems Flickr still works here so I'll be uploading my pictures there if you want to see them.

Day 1
First off the bat, I'd like to say that I'm not an international traveler. I've traveled on business throughout North America, but when it comes to traveling overseas, that's completely new to me. For the trip to Shanghai, the majority of our team flew out on Wednesday morning on the 2:45am Cathay Pacific flight.  YVR is pretty much a ghost town at that time, where the only things open are the Burger King before security and the Hudson News, after security, where you can pick up reading material, snacks and water.



The flight over to Hong Kong was pretty much uneventful, with the majority of the people falling asleep. After flying on North American flights, flying Cathay Pacific was a great experience. They had a robust entertainment system in the seatbacks that was a godsend to pass by the 13hr flight, with Movies (watched Angels & Demons and The Hangover), TV shows (caught some episodes of Family Guy and House), music selection that puts my iPod library to shame, as well as video games (only played a game of Bejeweled 2). We were served dinner (had some salmon dish in a wine sauce) as well as breakfast (egg & ham croissant). I did noticed that they had cups of noodles for those that needed a snack between the two meals.

After landing in Hong Kong, we transferred to and boarded our Dragonair flight to Shanghai. That's where we hit a snag in our travel plans. Apparently something on our plane didn't quite work. I didn't hear all the deals but we were delayed for about an hour waiting for them to get a new part and run through all the checks again.

It seems the H1N1 virus is a big concern in China as we had to fill out a health form before entering the country and had to be screened before reaching China Customs. We were a little concerned when one of our group was pulled into the quarantine office. It seems that she was being honest when filling out her form and checked off that she had a runny nose. She was released after they checked her out though.

After collecting our gear, we were greeted by a representative from the event and were quickly guided to a shuttle bus to take us to the hotel. As most of the group do not speak Mandarin, it was quickly and unofficially established that Eugene is our translator, with Jeff serving as backup. Our second snag in our travel plans was that we were told that the bus ride would take two and a half hours, which was more than we expected looking at maps. We quickly realized why when we got onto the road. It seems that the highway that took was majorly backed up with traffic caused by what seemed to be a couple stalled cars on our route. In addition to seeing some crazy gridlock driving by the locals, we did get to see the city through the bus windows. It's pretty amazing to see a place where what amounts to half the population of Canada reside in.


We finally reached our hotel and noticed that this event seemed to be a bigger event than we thought as there were banners throughout the hotel to greet the teams participating. The bellboys seemed to be quite anxious to grab our luggage and take them up to our rooms while we checked in and collected our race & event packages. The hotel itself seems to be pretty nice with a definite Chinese feel to it. However, we quickly found out that the Business Center and Fitness Facility advertised were probably a figment of someone's imagination as we could not find either in the hotel.



For the entire stay at this hotel, the event organizers had arranged our meals for us. Dropping off our gear and checking out our rooms (small LCD TV, air conditioning, and some rooms had a Japanese tea ceremony setup) we headed down to grab our 3pm lunch buffet. The buffet was set up with some dishes in typical fashion, laid out on the table buffet style. However, they also had a server going around bringing other items to you as you were sitting and eating. The food itself was ok, and as someone said, free is free so you can't really complain.

After lunch some of us went to walk around the hotel to see what's around and buy some water. There's plenty of cars around and all those jokes about Richmond drivers seem to fit here as it can get pretty crazy crossing the road with cars turning. However, it's the scooters that seem to be more abundant here, with scooters parked on the sidewalks everywhere. During our walk we passed by stands selling stuff like caged baby rabbits, live turtles, dried tea leaves, hand clothes, snacks. We even walked through what looks to be a meat market where slabs of meat were just laid out there in the open. Also inside were a wide range of live fish and crabs.



Returning to the hotel after finding a grocery store and getting our water, we went back for dinner, which much to our disappointment, was essentially the exact same thing as our lunch. Most of us called it a day after that and turned in for the night.

 

[Illuminate]

Sweet, thanks for the detailed report, will be following this thread

[Lethal Weapon]

Yes, Its too bad they did not have a "Real Photographer" to capture the event...lol
GO Team Canada!

[popcorn]

Does anyone know who Team Canada members are for Shanghai?

[Illuminate]

Does anyone know who Team Canada members are for Shanghai?

It's listed in his blog http://swcdbir.wordpress.com/

[Row 2]

Yes Go team Canada.  I really enjoyed the posting, be sure to keep them coming and keep us in the Loop!

[popcorn]

Does anyone know who Team Canada members are for Shanghai?

It's listed in his blog http://swcdbir.wordpress.com/

Thanks.

The pictures of the buns (juicy buns aka siu long bao)... the team should try to find the ones that are really big and is individual serving each (almost the size of a small cup).  I tried it when I was in Shanghai.  It comes with a straw poked into it for you to get to the juice... they are super yummy and you will not find it here in Vancouver - I haven't found it anyways.

[grifter]

Yes, Its too bad they did not have a "Real Photographer" to capture the event...lol
GO Team Canada!

What do you mean?  Tim knows how to handle a camera....Oh, wait.  Never mind

[DBWTim]

Thanks everyone,

We're actually not the only team from Canada and in the race program we are referred to as Team Vancouver Canada. There is a team from Montreal that will be representing Canada as well. popcorn, thanks for the suggestion. Do you know where we could find those? We have only seen the normal dumpling sizes in our excursions.

Day 2
Our second day started with a breakfast buffet at the hotel in the same location as lunch and dinner the previous day. Unlike the previous two meals, we weren't served the same things as it was more the typical breakfast we were accustomed to. Eggs, toast, sausage, bacon, coffee, dim sum buns, etc. We also met some members of the De La Salle University team from the Phillipines.
 


Since most of the other teams were arriving today, the day was open for us to do what we wanted. For the group that I was with, we took a ride in the hotel shuttle (that's the shuttle in the picture and yes, we crammed 14 people into it) into Shanghai to do some shopping, see some sites and meet up with one of my friends currently living in Shanghai for dinner. Along the way, we even came across a large highway billboard promoting the regatta. After what was probably a 2 hour ride into town, the driver dropped us off at People's Square where we then proceeded to walk down Nanjing Road to the Bund waterfront.

The environment was a bit overwhelming at first with the amount of people and the variety of stores and offerings. You have familiar brands like Starbuck's, McDonald's, along side boutique stores like Rolex and Omega (I think we counted 3 of them as we walked down the street). Throw in some large mall buildings and it becomes a shoppers paradise... that is if you know what you're looking for. I was informed about being spoken to by people on the streets promoting their "merchandise", however I was still surprised at the amount of people coming up to you and handing out flyers, asking if you wanted "iPod, DVD, Rolex?". We even had guys that followed us for blocks trying to get us to go with them to their "store".



We did have a funny experience with getting SIM cards for our phones. As we were walking down the street, we saw a sign at the side of an alley saying they had SIM cards for sale. Since both myself and Greg had unlocked cell phones, we wanted to get local SIM cards to be able to communicate with people without paying the insane roaming charges. We walked down the alley looking for some storefront for a good block and couldn't find anything so we decided to walk back. Back at the entrance we asked a local store attendant where we could find the SIM cards that were being advertised. Just then a guy that we thought was napping jumped up and indicated that it was him and directed us to a chair and proceeded to pull out SIM cards out of a briefcase. Not exactly what we were expecting, but I guess we shouldn't have been surprised.



When we reached the Bund, one of the most famous tourist destinations in Shanghai, we did the usual tourist pictures with the Pudong District in the background (see first picture above). We then took the transit tunnel to cross the Huangpu River into Pudong. Let's just say that the experience was fairly interesting in the slow-moving powered "tram" with light effects projected onto the walls of the tunnel. "Cheesy" would be an understatement. "Molten Lava...Poisson & Blue Ocean...Meteor Shower..."

Once across, we found the waterfront in Pudong that faced the Huangpu River and The Bund (third picture above). We figured that the river must be pretty deep since there were several super tankers that went through it while we were there.



Since it was Mid-Autumn Festival, we just had to have some mooncake and since we kept on seeing advertisements for Häagen-Dazs's ice cream mooncakes, we just had to try those out. I have to say that it's not your parent's lotus paste & egg yolk mooncake but was a welcomed treat in the muggy Shanghai weather where it was reported to feel like 40 degrees.



After the ice cream we headed into the Super Brand Mall where much to our surprise, they were holding an "undergarment" fashion show. After catching a bit of the show and walking around the mall, which held a Best Buy, Toys 'R Us and what was an equivalent to a Holt Renfrew for sporting wear, we realized that there wasn't much anything in the mall that we couldn't get back in Vancouver and headed back across the river.



Walking back on Nanjing Road, we decided that we might as well see what all those people harassing us about their "merchandise" was about. That and this guy was following us for a dozen blocks and wouldn't leave us alone. Basically whatever you've been told about buying knockoffs is true. They will take you down an off the beaten path alley. They will take you into an secretive unlabeled door. They will have purses, jackets, watches, DVDs and even electronics of varying quality. They will harass you to buy something once you ask for a price. We even saw an Apple iPhone that supported 2 SIM cards, came with a stylus and ran a "slightly" different version of the iPhone firmware. Asking price? 1680RMB.


For dinner we met up with my Shanghai friend at the Old Shanghai Restaurant on Nanjing Road. Dinner was 12-courses and included authentic Shanghai-ese dishes like almond covered beef, shrimp, abalone (see picture above), crab and of course xiaolongbao. The prices for shopping may have been more that what we expected, but the price on food was amazing. 100RMB for the dinner, each person.

[paddlecwazy]

BC dragonboatings "real photographer" would have dedicated a whole album to the undergarment fashion show, not just some cursory snaps.

[BernMan]

I see lots were quite impressed with the food spread like Dario was and were taking photos! 

Where is a picture of Brad? I don't see him anywhere?

[Lethal Weapon]

BC dragonboatings "real photographer" would have dedicated a whole album to the undergarment fashion show, not just some cursory snaps

Haha
True enough. Of course more pictures of food is always in order as well.

What do you mean?  Tim knows how to handle a camera

Grrrr
Wait till I show him the bill for the repair......B@#$@tard....

[DBWTim]

It looks like I've exceeded my bandwidth on Flickr so I've borrowed a fellow paddler's account to host just the images forward this thread moving for the rest of the trip.

Day 3
For those that have been following the trip and have been wondering when the whole dragon boat thing comes in since it seems like a sight seeing vacation, the morning was spent practicing at the race site. Upon getting to the race site, we saw what we were told to be Champion boats tied to the docks awaiting the teams. The boats themselves remind me of head and tail-less Taiwanese boats that were put through an intense diet. They sit more level than the Swift 10-man's when fully loaded with paddlers however they are more tippy-ier than any other type of dragon boat I've been in. The had 7 rows of seats, however the first and last rows were essentially useless for us as we couldn't even fit our smallest rear ends in them.



It also seems that the race information that we were given didn't quite match what we saw at the site. We were told that PFD's were not required, but as we were loading our boat, the dock master required us to wear them. I don't really think those thin, bright orange pieces of fabric would save anyone if we did fall over. Plus they made paddling in them rather cumbersome. Also, we were told that the race course was 500m. A quick paddle from the start to the finish proved otherwise as it felt more like 300m.



Returning to the hotel after the practice and having lunch, a group of the team went to Zhujiajiao, a water village on the outskirts of Shanghai that was formed about 1,700 years ago. Walking around the village, visitors can see Fangsheng Bridge, ride gondolas around the village waterways (for a price) and haggle with street vendors for trinkets and knickknacks. I didn't buy anything but some in the group managed to get jewelry boxes, a silk duvet and a tea set. Personally it felt rather depressing to see how commercialized the village has become with most of the house fronts of the residences turned into some form of store front. This being my first experience in seeing this, I've been told that this is pretty common in high tourist activity locations in China and even the Great Wall was like this, if not even worse.

The team rested up in the evening in preparation for the races the next day so it was pretty low-key with dinner and a team meeting to go over the race plan for race day. Some of us actually went out for dinner since we wanted a change from the regular hotel buffet and found a place that served the "jumbo" xiao long bao with straw that popcorn mentioned. Only problem was that it only had crab ovary filling. We decided for 3 servings of the regular ones with different fillings, along with a spicy chicken and "pasta" (I could name it in Chinese but it would be hard to describe) dish. I have to say again, the food here is dirt cheap.. Dinner cost us the equivalent of $4 CAD each person.

[DBWTim]

Day 4 - Race Day

Race day started pretty much the same way that the previous days started. With a buffet breakfast at the hotel. After arriving at the race site via a shuttle bus with the Montreal team, we quickly found the team tent to drop off our stuff and got straight to business.



Race 1, 500m - 9:55am
1) Team Vancouver Canada, Lane 2 - 1:32.87
2) Summit Aim Dragon Boat Team, Lane 1 - 1:48.75
3) Boston Dragon Boat Team, Lane 3 - 1:49.63

One of the strange things about the event was that after the first race and the repechage races, all the teams were sent back to the hotel for lunch. It feels rather strange to be able to shower and eat between your first and second races of the day since we're usually used to just hanging around the site till the next race.

Race 2, 500m Semi - 2:25pm
1) Macau Dragon Boat Association Team A, Lane 3 - 1:30.84
2) Team Vancouver Canada, Lane 1 - 1:32.93
3) Montreal Dragon Boat Team, Lane 2 - 1:34.74
4) De La Salle University Dragon Boat, Lane 4 - 1:35.57

The second race was a prime example of all the things that could happen when you attend a slightly disorganized race and don't understand the language. When we arrived back to the race site and before we had a chance to warm up, we were called to paddle our boat out to the finish line for the opening and eye-dotting ceremonies. About 8 boats were "rafted" together during the opening ceremonies which included a number of speeches by officials and VIPs for the festival. At the close of the ceremonies, we paddled back to the docks and thought we had time to do a warm-up on the water.. until we were called to the startline. We quickly paddled back to the docks to get the lineup of paddlers that we wanted for the race and headed to start our race. We didn't really get the start that we wanted due to conflicting instructions and probably some frazzled nerves. In the end though, we came in 2nd allowing us to make it into the Grand Final.

Race 3, 500m Final - 3:10pm
1) Guangdong, China, Lane 2 - 1:27.00
2) Macau Dragon Boat Association Team A, Lane 1 - 1:30.71
3) Team Vancouver Canada, Lane 3 - 1:31.18
4) HK Dragon Boat Association Team, Lane 4 - 1:43.37

In the final we finally raced against the top seeded team of the event. These guys were hand picked from all across China to be athletes at a young age and have been strictly focused on training in dragon boat for the past year. So you'll all have to understand why we weren't surprised that they dominated the field. It was a pretty good race after we recovered and settled down after our frustrations from the second race and were able to keep with the top teams from Asia.

Race 4, 2500m - 4:30pm
1) Guangdong, China - 14:35.11
2) Team Vancouver Canada - 15:27.53
3) Macau Dragon Boat Association Team A - 15:28.04
4) Shanghai, China - 16:27.85
5) Team Montreal Dragon Boat Team - 16:43.16
6) HK Dragon Boat Association Team - 16:45.29
7) De La Salle University Dragon Boat - 16:46.99
8) Taiwan Normal University - 18:19.17

7 turns... 8 boats.. 10 paddlers... 2.5km.... sounds like Guts & Glory on steroids. All teams raced in the 2500m race and with the way the boats feel in the boat, I'm actually surprised that only one team flipped over during a turn (I believe it was the Taiwan’s Kinmen Institute team). We started in the 3rd position chasing after Guangdong and Macau with all teams of the 2500m starting with 15sec intervals between each other. We managed to get some payback on Macau by beating them in this race by only 0.11 seconds even though they still beat us due to tiebreakers. I have to say that it's a great way to end a season.. especially since you feel like you really don't want to be in a dragon boat ever again after you crawl out of the boat after the race.



At the end of the day, Guangdong came top overall. Second overall was Macau A which was their National team which we had been battling with throughout the day. In the end, the 500m results was the tie breaker since we both had the same number of points with them coming in 2nd in the 500m while we came 2nd in the 2500m.



The day was finally capped with an athlete dinner at another hotel where they we were served another dinner buffet. In addition we also had entertainment consisting of a Chinese musical instrument, a mask swapping magician, Tai Chi demonstration and a Chinese acrobat/contortionist. The food was ok, however the buffet was first come-first serve so basically everyone rushed the buffet table at once, causing long line-ups for the food. On the way back, listening to my friend's advice, we went to a KFC and ordered a box of egg-tarts. Yes, you've heard it right, egg-tarts... from KFC.

[doc]

Congratulations. Great result.

Enjoy the rest of your trip!